"That five dollars won't get him to it—it won't."
"Well, Matt's lucky this time, as it happens. He isn't going to have to pay the Indian the five. He's found a better way. Last night he went down to kinder look things over an' he found a couple o' men camping. First off he hoped they were the robbers but they're pretty nice men and they're engineers. Matt wouldn't have told them anything but when he found they were surveyin' Vinegar Creek and goin' on up to Buffalo next he could see right off that they had good chances of runnin' right into the cave, so he gets ahead of 'em by tellin' all about it and making 'em promise equal shares if they found anything."
"Clever Matty!" exclaimed Chick-chick.
"Yes, he's clever, Matty is. No good paying any five dollars to any Indian when he's got as good a thing as that. These engineers want to see our camp so Matty's to bring 'em up this afternoon while everybody's at the swim. He doesn't want the crowd around to be pestering 'em with questions."
When this information was carried to Jolly Bill he was more disturbed than he cared to acknowledge. He had a very well defined feeling that his scheme to restore Buffalo Lake had become common property and that these engineers were competitors. He felt some safety in the fact that he held options on the land; yet he had a strong desire to see this surveying corps and talk with the men about their work.
Thus it happened that Glen was in camp when the surveyors came—he stayed at Spencer's request to engineer the billy-cart. The engineers were young fellows, not overly clean; perhaps it was not to be expected in following such work. They were genial enough to the few people who were in camp. At first they did not seem inclined to pay much attention to Spencer, but after he had asked them one or two questions they began to take notice.
"Where are you running your levels for the Vinegar Creek survey?" asked Spencer.
"Running what?" said one.
"Oh, levels," said the other. "We haven't got to that yet."
"Find it rather hard to carry your lines through all that brush, don't you?"